Farewell

At last, the semester is over, the grades are up, and it’s time to take a break from school. I hope you all have a happy, healthy, and relaxing holiday season. I thank you for your hard work, and I hope that you enjoyed the course. Whether or not you enjoyed it, I hope you learned something, which ultimately is why we’re here.

I’ve gotten some email that suggests the feeling may not be mutual for some of you, but I can honestly say I learned something from all of you in the class during the semester, and I thank you sincerely for that.

Signing off the Intro Interactive Blog,

Alex

Presentation Tips and Hints

By now, you already have your presentation planned and prepared, and probably rehearsed to the second. But you might still want to consider the following sites with (in some cases, bulleted) points on how to make your presentation better.

Fast Company has a nice set of of recommendations (Near Death by Powerpoint) from Rob Waite. You should probably also at least visit the following excellent blogs on presentations:

• Beyond Bullets
• Presentation Zen
• Presentation Coach

Each of these has some examples of presentations that they consider great. I am particularly fond of what has been called the Lessig-Method, an example of which (from TED) is available on the first page of Presentation Zen.

I’ll see you on Thursday, video camera in hand, ready to upload the best presentations to the web.

Amazon Kindle

In case you missed it: Amazon Kindle launched. It’s an ePaper-based eBook. Meh. DRM-hobbled, and pricey.

Where’s Shibuya?

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of hanging out in Shibuya (and Shibuya/Aoyama is one of my favorite areas in the world), this video should give you a feel …

Mislinks relinked

Thanks to everyone who noted that the links (on the schedule) to Fab were messed up–fixed now. I’ve also linked up the readings for the following week; a selection of some things I’ve been writing.

On audio/video

OK, I said on class on Thursday that I was only going to tell the people where there (on time), but I guess that’s not entirely fair.

You are no longer required to post in audio or video, but you are still strongly encouraged to do so, just so you have that experience. In order to provide an even greater encouragement, if you want to do one of your response papers as a video or audio post, you are welcome to. Just be sure to mark it as such on your blog, so I know it is the response. (Obviously, I should be able to tell from the content, but you should also make it clear in the title or text for easy scanning in my grading. Thanks!)

Outline also extended to Friday (11-9)

Originally due this Tuesday, the outline should be posted to your blog by Friday–and again, early is fine.

In case it isn’t obvious, these two assignments (this and the annotated bibliography) have two purposes. The first is to give me an opportunity to steer you away from bad choices, if there are any. The second is to get your thinking about argument and structure from an early stage.

An Example

The following is an outline from a paper I just completed with a colleague:

Introduction

1. Much of the popular coverage of Wikipedia recently has focussed on its accuracy.

2. Another good approach would be to look at what areas of the knowledge domain Wikipedia covers.

The Bias of Wikipedia

1. Many of the recent problems with Wikipedia have been with inaccurate or defamatory articles.

2. Equally or more important is whether Wikipedia biases its coverage in favor of topics that are not traditionally as important to scholarly encyclopedias: Steven Colbert or the Lord of the Rings, for example.

3. To map that coverage, we argue that two metrics are useful: an overall taxonomy of subject coverage, and a mapping between traditional subject-specific encyclopedias and Wikipedia.

4. These two measures tell us that Wikipedia is particularly strong in some of the “hard” sciences, but does not cover the humanities and social sciences nearly as well.

A Topical Measure

1. Size is not the only thing that matters when it comes to academic libraries or encyclopedias; coverage also matters.

2. Classification systems like the Dewey Decimal System and the Library of Congress Classification can be used to compare the distribution of topics between libraries, or o between libraries and a standard like Books in Print.

3. We took a sample of articles from Wikipedia and coded them into LC classification.

4. The distribution can then be compared to Books in Print (see the figure), a useful metric of general knowledge.

5. Wikipedia tends to have more articles on the naval sciences and military than in other published works, due to an anomaly in naming conventions in encyclopedias.

6. The bias is even more pronounced in history categories because Wikipedia imported data from another source that was heavily history related.

7. The bias in favor of music is not due to an emphasis on humanities, but rather the result of strong fan-based communities of popular musical groups.

8. The sciences are well covered, but the social sciences are not–no surprise, though there are surprises (medicine and law) within.

Another measure of emphasis

1. The distribution of headwords alone is not enough, we should also look at the average length of articles and how frequently they are edited.

2. The articles are not uniform in length. (See figure for distribution by LC category, of the average size of articles.)

3. The longest articles are in areas that we noted seemed to have fewer articles in total: law and medicine, for example.

4. Likewise, some of the most frequently changed articles seem to be in the humanities, reflecting the enthusiasms of the fan culture.

5. Overall, Wikipedia coverage is, to borrow a term from a New Yorker overview, “lumpy.”

Wikipedia and Other Encyclopedias

1. How does the coverage of Wikipedia differ from that of traditional field-specific encyclopedias?

2. The best way to find out is to compare articles in Wikipedia to those in encyclopedias of physics, linguistics, and poetry.

3. The most effective way to do this is to compare on the basis of article titles (headwords), though this raises problems.

4. Google provides a good way to match headwords as nearly as possible.

5. We used human coders, with a five-point comparison process, which reduces coding bias.

6. This process can lead, however, to some false positives.

7. It is important to map not only from the traditional encyclopedias to Wikipedia (to show deficiencies in the latter) but back the other way too.

8. A substantial minority of articles in the traditional encyclopedias were missing from Wikipedia.

9. This suggests that there remain under-developed areas of Wikipedia, even as more popular areas are far more extensive than printed-and-bound encyclopedias.

10. While it’s difficult to arrive at a topically-constrained view of a particular field in Wikipedia, we did manage to provide a view backwards, and found many articles in Wikipedia that were not included in printed encyclopedias.

Whence Differences?

1. Some of the Wikipedia directly references the outside encyclopedic references.

2. It seems poetry is undercovered, perhaps because poets are less interested in the encyclopedic process, or particularly Wikipedia.

3. Some of this is due to differences in editorial choice: e.g., should an encyclopedia include biographical articles?

4. This is less of a problem for Wikipedia, since its content tends to be searched rather than browsed.

5. There may also be an issue of how broad or narrow a given article should be.

6. The poetry encyclopedias had the greatest differences between Wikipedia and the printed encyclopedia, and points to ways in which Wikipedia might differ from traditional encyclopedias.

Conclusion

1. The printed encyclopedia is bound by traditional limits of space and weight, and this shapes its content.

2. The process by which Wikipedia is created fundamentally affects its content bias.

3. Overall, whether you think Wikipedia is accurate or not probably depends on whether you are a physicist or a poet.

4. It’s probably not a coincidence that two areas of particular lack–medicine and law–are also areas in which there is a particular licensing of expertise.

5. Can you have too much of a good thing? Does an encyclopedia need an article on Finnish profanity?

6. At present, Wikipedia has several projects aimed at making particular topics more complete and authoritative.

7. Printed works provide a good gauge of coverage, but should not be taken as a kind of “gold standard.”

8. The approaches taken here provide two ways of measuring divergence of Wikipedia from other collections of knowledge, and tracking its relationship to the wider range of knowledge.

Format

Some folks ran into formatting difficulties in posting your annotated bibliography to the blog. I want to encourage you to do two things. First, write it in a plain-text editor (e.g., Notepad on Windows machines), and do any markup (bold, etc.) in the editing box of the blog. Alternatively, instead of pasting from word into the “visual” tab of the blog composing page, if you paste into the “code” tab, all of your markup in Word will disappear. I suspect that 99% of the problems with formatting is because of a reliance on Microsoft Word.

You are welcome to use the traditional I, 1, A, i, a (or whatever) multi-level outline, but to be honest, I am perfectly happy with subheadings, followed by a series of thesis statements for each paragraph in that subheading. That is what I have done above. This should provide a clear structure not just of a single paper, but of five (or seven, or nine, etc.) little papers that make up the big paper.

Sentences, not topics, at the paragraph level

At least at the flattest level, your outline should make claims, that would then be argued and defended in that paragraph. Topical statements (statements about the subject or focus of a section) are find at the broadest level, but at the narrowest level–which should be the paragraph level–I want a statement that can be argued. There should be something that can be defended or refuted; not “Now we will discuss cheese,” but rather “Cheese is tasty.” The first of these is a topical sentence, the second is an argument that needs to be defended. You don’t have to show what evidence you plan to use to defend these claims–you just need to make them.

Can I deviate from the outline in the final document?

Of course, an outline is not written in stone: it is just written. I expect that your final document will grow (and potentially shrink) from this outline in various directions. In fact, the final article that was created based on the outline above is structured only vaguely like what appears here. However, I want to see this as a kind of skeletal first draft that allows for a strongly structured final project. If you cannot make a structured argument at this stage, you are not ready to start writing.

Questions? Comment below or over on Facebook.

On whether to get a PhD

One of the students in the class suggested I repost this here. It’s from an old post on my blog. Please head over there if you have comments.

So, it’s that time of the year again, and so the inevitable question comes from a few graduate students: Where’s a good place to get a communication Ph.D.?

Well, first of all, that’s probably the wrong question. The right question is: “Should I pursue a Ph.D.?” and the answer I will always give is “no.”

Should I go for a Ph.D.?

No. There are lots of good reasons not to pursue the doctoral degree:

1. People really won’t respect you more. Some folks actually do pursue a Ph.D. with the thought that they can then be called “Dr. X” (OK, maybe not Dr. X. Heck, it would be worth it if you could be called “Dr. X.” I mean they want “Dr.” in front of their own name.) I’ve talked to these people, and don’t understand it. There’s no special power a Ph.D. grants–it doesn’t certify you for much of anything, with the below exception. In other words, if you are doing the Ph.D. because you want the prestige, it’s really not worth the effort. Besides, this is America! No titles, remember? If you want the Dr., just use it; or, as a co-worker did, Senator.

2. You won’t make more money. At least not with a communication degree–it may be different with an engineering degree, for example. Someone is now sure to come up with a statistic that says that you make an extra million dollars in your lifetime with a Ph.D., but (a) it’s false causation and (b) you’ll spend that on therapists and paying off debts.

3. You’re really good at coursework, and so you think it’s the natural next step. Generally, it’s not. Particularly if you are in a program that is designed as a “terminal degree,” like the Informatics program at UB, or our MS program at Quinnipiac, you probably are not very well prepared to pursue the Ph.D. People have successfully moved on, but it isn’t a smooth transition. If you gain admittance, you’ll probably be scrambling to catch up with students who have been on the research path during their masters programs. Moreover, although there is generally coursework at the doctoral level in US institutions, it isn’t the major part of the work of the degree. The Ph.D. is always a research degree–you are expected to come in and be an apprentice researcher fairly quickly, on top of your required coursework.

4. You want to be a college instructor, and you think this is where you learn to do it. I was actually lucky in that my program did talk a little bit about teaching, but that is certainly not the focus of a Ph.D. program anywhere; except, of course, in education programs. If you aren’t ready to teach after finishing your masters degree, that isn’t going to change by the end of the Ph.D. You should already be a master of your field when you have the masters degree in hand, the doctorate means that you have made a significant contribution to that field. Many doctoral programs graduate excellent researchers who would be horrible if unleashed on an undergraduate class.

Now, it’s true: it is increasingly the case that colleges and universities will only consider Ph.D.s for their teaching positions. But the problem is two-fold. First, if you are really primarily interested in teaching, you are going to be very frustrated spending 18 hours a day doing research for several years. As a result, you probably won’t be very good at it. Second, as noted below, you probably won’t be able to get a teaching job after all that anyway.

Dirty Ph.D. Program Secrets!

Still not convinced? OK, the two dirty secrets of doctoral education:

1. Many people don’t finish. It’s bad enough that you are going to be alienating your family, and going into debt (and this is assuming that you aren’t paying tuition, but just for living, etc.), you may end up not finishing. The lucky people drop out in the first year. Many get through the coursework, only to be unable to complete general exams. A much larger number get through any required coursework and exams, but find themselves unable to complete the dissertation. If you don’t think you can write a 300 page book now, don’t expect that is going to magically change by the end of your program. There is a reason my university sent out “Ph.C.” (candidate) diplomas. A lot of people end up stuck indefinitely on the dissertation, and in at least some cases, this isn’t even their fault. Sometimes departmental politics or shifts in the field make completing a dissertation in your area impossible.

2. Of those who get the degree, only a small fraction actually get a job teaching in a college or university. An even smaller number end up teaching at an institution as good as the one they attended. Now, you may not want to do this, and you have another target, which is fine. If you do want to teach, you should definitely have a strong “plan B.” Oh, and when I say teach, I mean anywhere. I have colleagues who are brighter and more accomplished than I am who are either unemployed or who are teaching under conditions they hate. A large number of doctorate-holding individuals are stuck in the perpetual hell of adjunct work, hoping one day to “make their break.” Just read through the archives of Invisible Adjunct to get a feel.

You have self-confidence, or you wouldn’t be even considering this. But be realistic about that self-confidence–it takes a lot to make even a minor splash. I know that the JD and MBA people will eat me alive for saying this, but there is usually some clear path out of the top programs for law, business, and medicine. Unless you are at the bottom of your class, you’re likely to get some job in your profession. The truth that schools won’t tell you is that even among the most elite programs, a tenure-track position is far from guaranteed. The majority of graduates go into something else. You would be surprised how many movers and baristas hold doctorates from top universities.

Not Dead Yet!

So, still here? Is there a good reason to pursue a doctorate? Yes, I think–and this is just my own opinion–that there are two good reasons. First, you love to do research. You aren’t just a curious person–everyone says they are a curious person–you live on curiosity and Top Ramen. You do not care particularly about being rich, but you want to be challenged every day. You are passionate about learning and helping others to learn. You will need that passion to sustain yourself through the idiocy, politics, and bureaucracy of the typical doctoral program. Doctoral programs virtually guarantee stress beyond what you have experienced before, which accounts for the strange bestiary that is the typical university faculty.

Second, you like spending most of your life around people who are smarter and more driven than you are. If you are used to being the smartest person in the room, get over it. (Contrariwise, if you think everyone who pursues a Ph.D. is brilliant, be prepared to be disabused of that notion. Many of the brightest people said “screw this” several paragraphs ago and are signing up for the GMAT/LSAT/MCAT as you are reading.) That was really important for me, because I am naturally both lazy and competitive. If there aren’t people around me doing really interesting stuff, I am less likely to be doing so. There was something really exciting to me about being in a room with people who were likely to change the world, and hoping that I could too.

Finding a program

So, now that you are sold on the idea of a doctorate, where’s the best place to go for one in communication? There isn’t a single answer to that question. As you will find, if you haven’t already in your coursework, there isn’t really a field of communication. Really, it’s more of a family of topical areas and approaches that gets bundled together under that name. As one of the younger fields of study, what you find in one communication department is unlikely to be identical to what you will find in another. There are certain affinities among some programs, but there isn’t any clear leader.

The best way to find a program you would like to study in is to identify the dozen or so living researchers you would most like to be a slave assistant for. Whose thinking really excites you? Now, it may be that their work on paper is a really poor representation of what they are like in person, but this will at least get you going down the right path. Honestly, if you can’t think of anyone you would get excited about working with, you have a lot more homework to do before you consider going on to a doctoral program.

You probably shouldn’t choose a program based on just that one person. Once you find where these folks are working, you should take a look at the rest of the faculty, and see whether there are other people you would like to work with there. This is pretty important, since you are likely to be taking classes with them, and one of them may end up being your advisor, depending on how the department assigns students to committees. Finally, if you can figure out who the students are, see if you like the kinds of research they are doing. Email some of them and ask about the department: current students are often the best resource for deciding whether this is the kind of place you want to go.

Set up a time to talk with the chair of the department and the faculty members you are most interested in. Yes, even (especially!) if the campus is in another part of the world. There is a good chance you will be relocating for graduate school, so you better find out if you like the city and the campus as well as the people. Equally importantly, although I don’t know of doctoral programs that explicitly interview candidates, by becoming a real person to the faculty, you are more likely to be in mind when they consider admissions and tuition awards.

I will reiterate: don’t go unless it is paid for. There are a handful of programs that do not award assistantships to new students, but most use the assistantships mainly, or even exclusively, as a recruitment tool. Don’t expect, in those cases, that you are going to show up, pay tuition for a year, and wow them into supporting you. Too many students do, and then find themselves in impossible financial binds and heartbreak.

But, you ask, isn’t there a ranking of Ph.D. doctoral programs? I would like to say “no,” but there is such a ranking. The National Communication Association does a reputational ranking of doctoral programs in a number of subfields. There are a couple of caveats to bear in mind. First, “reputation” doesn’t necessarily mean quality. If Princeton decided to offer a Communication Ph.D., it would quickly rise to the top of these lists, largely because of the name. That’s not to say that a Princeton Department of Communication would suck, just that the reputational measures might outstrip the reality of the program itself. The other piece of this is that the NCA does not represent all of communication. In fact, a lot of scholars in the field may choose the ICA as their primary affiliation, or IAMCR, for example. So the ICA people might have a slightly different take on the best schools.

Making the application

Once you have picked out five or seven schools that you think are worth applying to, spend some time working on the applications. It’s really hard to gauge what admissions committees will do with your application. A letter of recommendation from a colleague that is well known in the field might go a long way. Stellar GREs might attract attention. While good grades are expected, they are more likely to look at the courses you took to decide whether you have the appropriate preparation for a doctorate. But most important, for many schools, is a statement of purpose that shows that you have a clear expectation for your future as a researcher, and that you know about what their program can offer you. It is pretty common that students receive admission and an assistantship from one of their most desired schools only to be rejected by one of their less interesting picks. Admission to doctoral programs tends to be very idiosyncratic.

I would strongly recommend against limiting yourself geographically. I have to admit that the city of Seattle was a major part of the reason I ended up at the University of Washington, and that worked out well for me. Had I stayed in San Diego, I would have done fine with UCSD. Both programs are of very high quality, and also happen to be in great cities. But if you are limiting yourself to a local university, and that university is not among the top in the US, consider seriously whether it is worth your time and effort to commit to a Ph.D. there. Without naming names, there are Ph.D. programs that really are sub-par. There is an unfortunate amount of snobbery and nose-turning as it is, often at cross purposes. Put someone from Columbia, Wisconsin, and Austin in the same room, and there is a chance all three will consider themselves to be at the top of the food chain. If you are completing a Ph.D. at Pudunk U., you may be limiting your possibilities. Since only fools do the Ph.D. more than once, do you really want to put that effort into a university that has an undistinguished program?

Please don’t take this the wrong way. I loved graduate school. I’ve talked to many successful researchers who hated it, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I would have loved it even if it turned out that I didn’t get the chance to work in academia, and I’m really happy that I do. But doctoral programs often share their Kool-Aid widely, and are lost in a haze of self-appreciation. Don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions: What percentage of people finish? What percentage of those get tenure track jobs? What do the others end up doing? Are the students happy? Are the faculty happy? Is it a supportive environment? This will be your entire life for a good number of years, you should go in with your eyes wide open.

Update: Also, don’t even think about a Ph.D. in physics .

Annotated Biblio: Extended

The annotated biblio was to be due this Tuesday. A couple of people have asked for extensions, so it is now due this Friday, November 2, by midnight for everyone. Note that this doesn’t mean you have to use the extension, but if you need it, there it is.

I’ve gotten a few questions on what is expected, since I was surprised to find that for some of you this is your first annotated biblio. The assignment is meant to provide an opportunity to help prepare for your final white papers, and to give me an opportunity to make sure you are making progress in the right directions and hopefully allow for some form of course-correction. More specifically:

* Your annotated bibliography should be posted to your lead author’s blog no later than midnight on November 2.

* The citations should be in APA or MLA format. You should boldface, ourdent, or otherwise separate the citations from the annotations.
* The annotations should be in the range of 100-200 words each, depending (naturally) on how much there is to summarize. They should (a) briefly summarize the argument of the article, (b) evaluate the article critically, with special attention to (c) how you will make use of the article to provide evidence for your white paper.

* Your bibliography should consist largely of scholarly or trade articles or books, not items found in the popular press. In general, the best place to draw from is peer-reviewed journals and scholarly books, though trade journals (journals that are intended for the industry, like Broadcasting & Cable) are also acceptable in many cases. You should have a minimum of eight scholarly/trade sources, but this is very much a minimum.

* You may draw from newspaper articles or magazine articles as primary sources, but these should be used far more sparingly as they do not carry much weight. One or two references from places like the New York Times or the MIT Tech Review are fine, but journalistic sources should provide only basic facts. If you want to make use of analysis, draw on experts.

* If the source is on the web, feel free to link to it, but if you are using web-available sources, you need to be especially cognizant of their reliability.

* If you find that an author’s own abstract is already the best summarization, you can use part of it, but be sure to place it within quotation marks.

* There are lots of good (and many poor) examples of annotated bibliographies on the web. Feel free to look at these for some ideas. There are also some decent guides on how to go about writing annotated bibliographies: here, here, here, and here, for example.

Information R/evolution